Research is necessary to advance knowledge and is often conducted to increase a user's understanding about a particular issue or topic. Currently, a majority of the research is conducted via the Web. However, conducting research can be time consuming, inefficient, and inaccurate due to the large number of electronic documents available, which often times cannot be read in their entirety.
Conventionally, users conduct research by entering a query, locating results that satisfy the query, and reviewing at least a portion of the results, which are often provided as a list. For example, a user, writing a thesis paper on Prader-Willi syndrome, conducts research relating to the syndrome by identifying documents that mention or are related to the syndrome. Once accessed, the user can begin reviewing the documents, but is unable to determine how much of the material she has accessed with respect to the information space for Prader-Willi syndrome. Thus, the user must keep reading until he believes that he has covered an adequate amount of material. One indication that may signal to the user that he has reviewed enough of the material is when the user starts seeing some of the same material from different sources. However inherent memory limits severely restrict the ability of the user to keep a mental map of the progress in addition to the knowledge extracted from the documents review.
Also, using conventional search methods, the user is unable to identify how much of the information space she has researched and thus, does not know whether she should continue to conduct research or whether the documents she has accessed and reviewed are sufficient for covering the information on Prader-Willi. Accordingly, the current search tools fail to provide a user with an overview of an information space or provide the user with means for tracking progress through that space and recognizing when the topic has been sufficiently researched by the user.
Therefore, there is a need for providing tools that allow users to view a search space for a topic and track review progress of that space. Preferably the tools are interactive so the user can perform a guided filtering of the result set down to a manageable list for review.